Prologue

Always smile. It makes people wonder what you’re up to – Anonymous

Monsters.

They’re commonly found under the bed, though they can make themselves comfortable in a closet when needed. Monsters plague every child in their early years, glaring out from the misty darkness with a form not quite discernable from the toys and trash that are so very often found under a child’s bed. Adults can’t see them, and children forget their realness as they grow up.

Few know the details on these creatures. It’s not known why they live under the beds, or why they’ve decided to torment children. What is known is that, though they will sometimes come out from under the bed and scare children if they’re feeling exceptionally bold, they aren’t allowed to directly harm the child. That’s a rule, which you might imagine was made by whatever sort of council or rule-enforcing body that might serve as a committee for these monsters.

But of course, there has to be a build up. Monsters don’t just appear one day and do their worst, most frightening tricks. They begin with little things – stealing soothers and throwing them halfway across the room and pulling blankets over the baby’s head. Why do you think babies wake up so often?

They certainly aren’t doing it for kicks.

It has been found that, as the child matures, the tricks become more frightening and complex. Eventually, the child reaches an age – usually around seven or eight, sometimes a few years later, depending on the child – when they stop believing in monsters. They begin to think their toys get lost because they roll over and push them off the bed, or that the unnatural shapes they see in the dark are just the results of throwing their jacket over a chair.

This is a signal that the monster must move on, though no one knows exactly why. Sometimes the monster’s get attached to their child and stay for a while in hopes that the child will believe again, but they all leave eventually. From there the monsters disappear, presumably to find a new child.

There had never been a time where a child could see monsters into their maturity, so there had never been a problem with the system – if you will call it a system. The child grows up, the monster moves on. That, as they say, was that.

But there is one case, pushed back and forgotten for so long that even the people who experienced it can’t say for sure whether the event was real or made up. A story of growing up, of love, of loss.

You may think the system I’ve just described is perfect in all ways. The child grows up, the monster moves on. But what would you say if I were to tell you that there was once a child that never really grew up?

There was once a little girl named Autumn. She never grew up. That’s not to say that she was mentally deficient in any way. It simply means that she remained a child at heart, which isn’t as uncommon as you might think. There are many people in the world who have remained young at heart. They grow up on the outside, just like everyone else, but on the inside they maintain the naivety of a child.

Normally this would not pose a problem. As I’ve said, there are many people in this world who are young at heart, and no one else ever had a problem with the monsters under the beds. The problem was that Autumn broke a very important rule. She did something that no child had ever done, not even once, in the entire history of the world, something that has never happened since and, hopefully, will never happen again.

AN: Hi there, its me again. If this story looks familiar its because I started posting it once and then took it down because I didn't know the characters anymore. My original plan was for it to end in an extremely violent way but now I think its going to be more of a coming of age story... we'll see how that turns out :)